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Tlie Smiling Isle 
of Passamaquoddv 



" The tremoloos shadow of the sea! 
Agahist its ground 
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree. 
Still as a picture, clear and free. 
With varying outline mark the 
coast for miles around." 



'^y Grace Agnes ^Thompson and May T'enery Martin 



REPRINTED FROM THE COPYRIGHTED 
NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE POi« SEPTEMBER 



THE NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE COMPANY 

OLD SOUTH BUILDING. BOSTON, MASS 



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The Smiling Isle of Passamaquoddy* 



Bv GRACE AGNES THOMPSON and MAY PENERY MARTIN 



" The tremulous shadow of the sea! 
Against its ground 
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree, 
Still as a picture, clear and free. 

With varying outline marks the coast 
for miles around." 



AWAY down East on the edge of 
"Blue-Nose Land," jtist across 
the American boundary Hne, so 
near you almost forget you are on Eng- 
lish soil, lies one of the most beautiful 
islands the traveler may chance to find. 
Not only is it rich in natural scenery and 
in romance and lore, but it is also one of 
the most important points for the supply 
of fish for the great American sardine 
industry. 

This little island, whose area is only 
twenty-six square miles, has no less than 
sixty weirs along its shores. These weirs 
are owned by about two hundred men, 
each weir bringing in yearly from six 
thousand to eight thousand dollars, nearly 
all of which the people spend in American 
markets. In fact, many of the residents 
on the island, though living within 
Canadian precincts, are lo^'al American 
citizens, who in choosing their home here 
were not unmindful of the wonderful 
charm of the place. The fortunate 
visitor who has spent a few weeks or 
months on the island would be pretty 
sure to urge the superior claims of the 
latter attraction. Certainly former resi- 
dents from the distant homes, to which 
some circumstance or other has called 
them, carefully keep in touch with the 
life on the island, reserving a lodging with 
old friends or having their own residences 
preserved for them and returning for a 
while each year, or as often as possible. 

Deer Island lies in the margin of the 
waters of the Bay of Fundy, facing that 
small open arm that is variously indicated 
on maps as St. Andrew's and as Passama- 



quoddy Bay — • called 'Quoddy for short 
in that region — - about one and one half 
miles from the American and three from 
the Canadian shore. It is half sur- 
rounded by a multitude of other islands, 
a group known as West Isles, belonging 
to New Brtmswick. Deer Island was 
first settled dtiring the middle of the 
eighteenth century. The original grant 
is not registered, but there is a record to 
the effect that in or about the year 1775 
the island was granted to one Thomas 
Farrell by grant under the Great Seal of 
the Province of Nova Scotia, to which 
the island at that time belonged. New 
Brunswick not being erected into a 
Province until 1784. Curiously enough 
there is no one of that name on Deer Island 
to-day, though others of the early settlers 
are well represented. The island is 
connected with the mainland only by a 
telephone put in from Eastport, Maine, 
in 1904. There is no telegraph. Even 
steamboat communication has existed 
only during the past eight years, the 
people depending before that on their 
boats. 

Most of the West Isles are much 
smaller than Deer Island, all of them 
rockbound, with bits of verdant green 
above the cliffs. Many of them are still 
untenanted, but on Campobello and 
Indian Island there are tiny hamlets 
nestled away under the wing of some 
sheltering hill. A Httle EngHsh steamer, 
the Viking, plies between them and the 
seaports on the coast of Maine and New 
Brunswick. 

As the boat steams in and out between 
the islands you catch numerous pleasant 
glimpses of Deer Island, — a crooked bit 
of land, with many a tiny inlet hiding 
away behind rocky promontories and 
tree-fringed coves inviting to harbor, and 
bold headlands reaching far out into the 



♦Copyright, August, 1908, by Grace Agnes Thompson and May Penary Martin. 



THE SMIUNG ISLE OF PASSAMAOUODDY 



^■■-^' 



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a 



Leonardville and Bar Island at high tide 



water. From a distance it would seem 
to be almost uninhabited, beautiful, quiet, 
secluded, even somber, but as you draw 
nearer the white houses begin to peep 
out here and there from the dense masses 
of rich green that form the background. 
Then unexpectedly you come upon a 
small village nestled along the edge of a 
cove almost hidden from view of the Bay, 
and you are at Deer Island. 

A few steps up the shore leads you to 
the residence part of the village. One 
long road winds along the water front 
around the little harbor and disappears 
in each direction beyond the curve of a 
sharp headland. The houses are perched 
in a row along the landward side, with a 
big, pine-covered hill just behind sloping 
upward in a moderately steep incline for 
some two hundred feet, so that some of 
them are literally built into the hillside. 
Two "general stores" face the road near 
the wharf, being, like it, built up from the 
shore on a network of piles, and at a little 
distance bevond the turn of the road to 



the north the tips of two steeples pointing 
above the brow of the hill tell where the 
villagers attend church. There is a 
schoolhouse, too, a good one, you are in- 
formed, but it stands near the churches 
and is quite hidden by the hill. There is 
nothing else to impress you except the 
stillness, — everything seems to be at 
peace and at rest, — and the exceeding 
beauty of the scenery in every direction 
you look. This, they tell you, is Leonard- 
ville. 

You are an expected guest, of course, 
or you would not be seeking Deer Island, 
for it is an exclusive bit of country that 
has not yet permitted the intrusion of 
tourist hotels, and not a solitary inn will 
you discover within its borders. But the 
residents are a hospitable, warm-hearted 
folk, who will gladly entertain you, if you 
go to them with the proper credentials. 
And when they entertain you they are 
not lax in any detail. So you are sure of 
finding some one at the landing to meet 
you and row your trunk, or cart or 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAOUODDY 




Bar island at low tide and the settlemExt's oldest house 



trundle it in a wheelbarrow, to the 
nearest point to your destination. For 
presumably the house in which you are to 
lodge while on the island is not in the 
village, but is some quaint farm dwelling 
a mile or so away that overlooks the cove 
and its encircling points of rock. The 
quainter the house the more interesting 
will be your visit. Not that there are no 
modern houses. Nearly all of the newer 
houses are entirely up to date residences, 
in point of the so-called modern improve- 
ments, — many of them quite consequen- 
tial, all of them roomy, comfortable, and 
pleasant to look at. But the older resi- 
dences are the historical ones, the homes 
that have been handed down from genera- 
tion to generation for more than a century. 
It is easy to guess, therefore, that your 
destination may be a certain little old- 
fashioned white house snuggled away 
at the top of a high bluff about two miles up 
the road from Leonard ville. You may 
drive there or get some one to row you 
around to the foot of the bluff, from 



which you can climb up the rocky path 
that leads to the door. But since you are 
an adventurous visitor, eager not to 
miss any possible one of the interesting 
experiences the island has to offer, you no 
doubt prefer to walk. You will be well 
repaid for the trouble. The road, which 
is a country highway of the best quality 
kept in excellent condition b}^ the govern- 
ment, leads you out of Leonardville by 
enticing you up a steep hillside, whose 
summit you reach only to find that you 
must immediately descend and begin the 
ascent of another equally sharp incline. 
But ^the vista that you discover in one 
swift comprehensive glance toward the 
water is so enhancing that you draw a 
quick breath and hurry on, wondering. 
Up hill and down, up hill and down, 
across a score of tiny rustic or log bridges, 
now between green fields or past a smooth 
stretch of beach, with a pine grove 
rambling upward on one hand and a 
bank of ledge and sand falling sharply 
down on the other to the swishing water 



THE SMILING ISLE OF P ASSAM AQlTODDY 



below with only a railing to keep the 
unwary traveler to his way, and finally 
around a curve where a grassy slope 
temporarily hides the water from your 
sight and ends at the edge of the road in 
a rail fence. No house is to be seen, but 
you know that the one you are seeking 
stands somewhere above and behind that 
grassy slope. There is no gate in the 
fence, so you climb over it as cleverly as 
you can and follow the little footpath 
that is vaguely limned through the grass, 
— up the slope and down the opposite 
side into a narrow ravine, the course of a 
small but Hvely brook which forms the 
outlet of a spring somewhere up the hill 
beyond the road you recently left, and 
finds its way around the bluff into the 
bay. You cross over a quaint bridge, 
and then climb upward again. Presently, 
a trifle out of breath, but tingling with 
a feeling made up of a variety of sensa- 
tions, — enthusiastic anticipation, half 
credulous, wondering admiration, and 
pure delight of living,- — you pause by a 
low wooden doorstep and stare away 
first at fhe fjord-like cove that lies almost 
at your feet and then across it to the 
beautiful medley of cliffs, islands, ever- 
greens, blue water, and far-away city. 
But an open doorway which reveals an 
expanse of shining yellow floor and 
sundry evidences of housewifely thrift, 
besides a pleasant fragrance of tea, and 
the hospitable voice of your hostess invite 
you to enter, and "just for a little while" 
you are persuaded to turn away. 

Later in the evening, for it was late 
in the afternoon when the Viking landed 
you at Leonardville, you climb the head 
of the bluff a few hundred yards beyond 
the house to watch the sunset. Then 
for the first time you realize the full glory 
of a Deer Island view. In every direc- 
tion there is something beautiful to see. 
Inward, looking toward the north, the 
high hills of Deer Island shut off its lower 
extremity from sight. Below them is the 
curved line of the shore with its rocky 
banks and bits of white showing through 
the green of the trees and fields directly 
above that you know to be the road from 
Leonardville. Looking waterward, in 
a broad semicircle you see the companions 
of Deer Island, — islands of all sizes, from 




The Leonard (nee Garrison) house 

the tiniest of islets to town-dotted frag- 
ments of country nearly as large as Deer 
Island itself. You can count them by 
scores scattered through the blue water. 
Straight before you lies Campobello, an 
attenuated strip of land with a shore line 
quite as remarkably irregular as that of 
Deer Island. To the right in the fore- 
ground is Indian Island with its one 
hamlet, the buildings visible here and 
there through the green of surrounding 
woods, and beyond across a narrow 
channel of open water is that rugged 
outpost of the United States, the rocky 
island on whose eastern edge the city of 
Eastport, Maine, is situated. You can 
easily distinguish the gray wharfs backed 
by storehouses and factories, and behind 
them the dwelling-houses and a number 
of churches scattered over the curious, 
knobby little hills that are a distinct 
feature of Eastport. 

Nearer yet, on a high bank just across 
the little cove below the bluff there 
stands one of the quaintest old houses 
you will see on Deer Island, and one of 
the most interesting; for besides being 
one of the oldest on the island proper, it 
is the Garrison homestead, where some 
of the ancestors of William Lloyd Garri- 
son once lived. Other descendants of 
this branch of the family, cousins of 
William L. Garrison, still inhabit it, and 
the grandson of the Great Liberator some 
times visits there. It is indeed an old 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAQUODDY 



house, which though kept in good repair 
is evidently of the style of the "day 
before yesterday," — a low building, 
whose single pitched roof is quite a full 
story higher in the front than in the rear. 
The story of this little house is a part of 
one of the pretty romances that are so 
delightfully woven into the history of 
Deer Island, and it shall presently have 
its share in our narrative. 

Just now, however, to you who stand 
on the head of that rugged bluff and look 
out across Chocolate Cove to the wild and 
beautiful scene that extends around you, 
tinted as it is in a wonderful combination 
of tones and halftones from the after- 
glow of the sunset, historical value is for 
the moment only a minor element of your 
appreciation. You wait till the lights 
twinkle out from a half dozen lighthouses, 
and then you go to your pillow, — no one 
keeps late hours in the West Isles, — very 
likely with the thought in your mind that 
at last you have found the "unsuspected 
isle" to which Robert Browning alludes, 
a very fair isle, and not in "far-off seas." 

You are sure to be up with the lark 
next morning, — whatever your city cus- 
toms may be, you will always rise early 
on Deer Island, for the air is vigorous 
with ozone, and your sleep is so sweet and 
refreshing that you find yourself almost 
impatient to explore the delightful possi- 
bilities of each new morrow. If the first 
glance from vour window discloses a 




Leading to riiE hi'GH of a precipice 



dense fog, you must not be discouraged, 
for the sun will probably burn it off. 
Besides, often when the thickest kind of 
a mist blanket hangs over the woods and 
bluffs of the southern shore, hiding the 
Bay of Fundy, one has only to go across 
Deer Island to the St. Andrew's side to 
find the most limpid of clear atmospheres. 

After breakfast, the suggestion of a 
sail may prove very tempting if you are 
fond of water sport, but one glance at 
your map will settle that question. No 
boats for you on this first morning. You 
have come to see Deer Island, and Deer 
Island you must see before you can be 
hindered by the other schemes that will 
be sure to formulate themselves with the 
coming of another day. 

The island possesses some very beauti- 
ful drives, so that though the distances 
are never great it will be pleasanter to 
reserve one's legs for the occasional 
climb "for a view" by the way, than to 
tramp all day. You will be able to 
borrow a horse and buggy from one of 
the neighbors, — only a very enterprising 
member of the younger generation would 
think of hiring them to you, and even 
then the price charged would be surpris- 
ingly small. 

Your drive will carry you over the 
government highway, — indicated on the 
accompanying map by the dotted line, 
a good carriage road of hard gravel built 
upon a ledge base, which runs nearly 
around the body of the island, following 
for the greater part of the distance the 
sinuous windings and turnings of the 
shore with its numerous bays and inlets. 

Instead of circling first to the south- 
east around the lower end of the island 
where there are no settlements other than 
scattered farmhouses, you would prob- 
ably find it more interesting to begin 
vour day's excursion by taking the road, 
over which vou came yesterday, in the 
direction of Leonardville. From the top 
of the first hill you look the scenery over 
keenly to be sure that everything is as you 
saw it vesterday, all those splendid views 
a charming reality and not the enchant- 
ment of mere imagination. Then down 
hill again, at a pretty good pace, too, — 
vour horse seems to have caught the ex- 
hilaration of your spirit, and has to be 



THE vSMILING IvSLE OF PASSAMAOUODDY 



--"'^v^gSg^^^^fSfriii' -"Z^ — 




Lambert's Cove — mail day 

held in rather than driven; he is a good 
roadster, anyway, as you will find while 
the day wears on, for the few people of 
Deer Island who keep horses, most of 
them being quite Venetian in their alle- 
giance to boats, are proud of the fact that 
they keep only good stock. 

Leonardville lies perhaps a mile back. 
It is a small village, as already described, 
comprising only about forty-three houses 
in all, — a still pleasant place, with an air of 
having passed middle life and retired 
comfortably on a neat income. No 
wonder it looks out so complacently from 
its seclusion; it is parent to more than 
one personality that is active and honored 
out in the big world. 

The Deer Island customs house, a cute 
little building, scarcely bigger than an 
ordinary-sized room, was situated at 
Leonardville, but it has recently been 
changed into a dwelling-house. A busy 
place it used to be, for not a boatload of 
groceries nor one of the packages brought 
from the shops of Eastport or Lubec 
could be introduced into the homes of 
Deer Island without its share of dutv. 
It is interesting just here to note that 
shopping in the United States is consid- 
ered by West Isle people to pay in spite 
of duties. 

The residents are mostly fisherfolk, 
not in the ordinary meaning of the word, 
however. A fisherman of Deer Island 
is generally an educated, refined, and 
usually "well to do " person, who owns or 
shares in the ownership of a sardine weir 
and is employer to several boatmen whose 
business it is to gather in the trapped fish 
and transfer them to the factories at 
Eubec and Eastport. Several of these 
weirs are situated close to Leonardville, 
one under a high bank a little way to the 



Butler's Point and McMaster's Island 

south, the others grouped around a nar- 
row strip of land that appeared yesterday 
to be a long arm of Deer Island crooked 
around the harbor, but is now a mere 
thread of rockbound green beyond a 
ten-minute row over the waves of an in- 
coming tide. The dry bar which con- 
nected them yesterday and which lends 
its name of Bar Island to the "thread of 
green" lies now beneath water of suffi- 
cient depth to allow a moderately large 
steamer to pass over it in safety. Some 
of the weirs can be discovered readily, 
though the tall piles that enclose them 
are nearly submerged. You can trace 
their fencelike outlines by the brush that 
is interwoven between the piles to keep 
the fish from swimming out. 

Just beyond Leonardville the road 
curves to the left around the brow of the 
high hill that rises so abruptly behind the 
village, and after forming a wide detour 
swings inward across the island. Another 
highway, however, continues by a sharp 
turn to the right past the inner angle of a 
beautiful sheet of water nearly land- 
locked and banked by steep grass-covered 
slopes that is known as Northwest 
Harbor, and so on toward Richardson 
and the northern end of the island. The 
view from the head of the harbor is es- 
pecially fine. The harbor is long, crooked, 
and rather narrow, and has a margin of 
sheer wooded banks that end in two 
precipitous bluffs a mile away, between 
which you catch a glimpse of Fundy and 
sundry islets. 

It is up hill and down for a short time 
and then suddenly a bit of level country 
opens up at the foot of one of the briefer 
inclines where you are still one hundred 
and fifty feet above the sea, and there 
just beyond a bend of the road lies the 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAOUODDY 



9 



larger of the only two lakes Deer Island 
possesses. The water lies in a bowl-like 
hollow of the hills, scarcely a mile wide 
at its greatest extent, with woods of 
maple, birch, and pine nearly all the wav 
around, and completing the circumference 
broad fields where the daintiest of violets 
and lady's slippers abound. "What a 
petite and charming lake it is! " you think 
as you drive on. 

Little Meadow Pond, the smaller of the 
two lakes, lies at the right of the road a 
short distance farther on in the direction 
of Richardson, the way thither being 
through thick woods and up a particu- 
larly difficult hill. It is the terror of 
strangers — this hill ; few will risk riding 
down it, if by any means they can manage 
to ride up. It is part of a new thorough- 
fare that has been extended within recent 
years from the old highway indicated on 
the map, which is the direct route to 
Lord's Cove, to meet another road that 
wandered around through Richardson 
and was lost in the woods at the edge of 
the village. Consequently one may now 
drive over the crest of the hill and thus 
down to Richardson on the shore half way 
between Lord's Cove and Northwest 
Harbor by what may well be termed a 
"short cut." 

Like Leonardville, Richardson is built 
along the shore with hills in the back- 
ground; but imlike it, the hills here 
though high are gentle-sloped with long 
reaches that dip far down into the basin 
of the Bay, and there is no cove. For 
these reasons, with the aid of a long 
wharf, steamboats and other sea craft are 
enabled to land directly in spite of chang- 
ing tides. This in turn perhaps explains 
why|there has always been more boat- 



building at Richardson than at any other 
Deer Island settlement. The work is 
done in an unobtrusive way, vet with 
skill, many a schooner and fishing sloop 
having been constructed there whose sea- 
worthiness has been proved by the storm- 
iest of ocean tests. During more recent 
years not a few of the handsome tenders 
that belong to certain famous yachts first 
slipped into salt water from the chute of 
a Richardson boathouse; in fact, an 
order for a yacht of moderate size finds 
its way there now and then; while many 
of the diverse assortment of prettv sailing 
craft used by the inhabitants of Deer 
Island and its neighbors are built at 
Richardson or its sister villages. 

Between Richardson and Lord's Cove 
the road sweeps around the lower reach 
of a hill that is known as Daddy Good's 
mountain, after the nickname of a certain 
quaint old man whose property it once 
was. 

The summit of this hill is always 
pointed out to visitors as one of the best 
spots on the island from which to see the 
Bay of Fundy islands. So you may as 
well pause in your drive, tie up your horse 
by the roadside, and scale the height. It 
is rather steep, though not difficult to 
climb, and when you are once up, you 
will agree that it was well worth the 
trouble. Here you have the advantage 
of a fairly high elevation with no woods 
to obscure the view, these having been 
burned off in frequent forest fires. Off 
to the right is another glimpse of Campo- 
bello, where the nearest summer hotels 
are situated. Beyond is the open water 
of Fundy. Nearer lie a long line of islets, 
now and then one showing a human 
dwelling tucked safely awav into a 




Little Meadow Poxd. Lily poxd in distaxce 




Stuart's Cove 



10 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAQUODDY 



sheltered recess above gray cliffs, — 
" Sprinkled isles, lily on lily that o'erlace the 
sea." 

It is a wonderfully beautiful sight, the 
like of which one cannot picture from mere 
imagination. 

Pope's Folly, where poor Pope estab- 
lished a trading post in IS 12 and lost his 
all, lies close in by Deer Island not far 
from Indian Island. The Hospital 
Islands, Spectacles (Spec, the natives 
say), Simpson's Island, and a few others 
directly in front of you, lie within a 
mineral region that has been successfully 
mined in a small way. On Simpson's 
Island there is a small copper mine in 
which an American company is much 
interested. St. Plelena, Dinner, Cherry, 
Casco, The Nubbles, White Horse, are 
the names of others of the West Isles 
group, each with its own individual 
romance, legend, or use. Beyond White 
Horse on the edge of the horizon miles 
out into Fundy are the angry Wolves, 
on which, if you visit them, you may be 
imprisoned for days by the wild surf that 
pounds hungrily against their gaunt sides 
when there is the least provocation of 
wind or storm. 

You descend Daddy Good's mountain 
feeling more assured than ever that you 
have discovered the most thoroughly de- 
lightful scenery that exists along the 
Atlantic coast. 

The next place of interest for you is 
Lord's Cove, an irregular but very pretty 
little harbor near the northern end of the 
island. The village at the head of this 
cove is noticeably smaller than the settle- 
ments that you have already visited, 
though it is beginning to grow. Its 
houses seem to have gone wandering aim- 
lessly along the shore on one forgotten 
day, and to have paused suddenly in their 
tracks, never, for some unapparent 
reason, to move again. Even the little 
church, which pastors also all the flock 
from Richardson because they have no 
church of their own, appears to have 
arrived only for a call, and then to have 
changed its mind and stayed on indefin- 
itely. The pier, a superior government 
structure, extends far out into the water 
from a narrow hollow at the foot of Tre- 
cartin's hill. It is the third stopping 



place on Deer Island of the Viking on its 
"down" trip. *^ 

The background here, like that at the 
other villages, is a series' of undulating 
hills which surround the harbor and reach 
a height of one hundred and ninety feet 
toward the north. From Lord's Cove a 
road runs straight across the island, 
cutting off its entire northern end, but 
you will, of course, drive on by the shore 
past the big headland, almost three 
hundred feet high, that forms the north- 
ern, or as natives of the place say, the 
lower end of the island. This headland 
is one of the most worthy climbs "for a 
view" the island has to offer. There is a 
little house half way up that would delight 
the heart of any artist, and where you 
may stop for a drink of cool spring water, 
if you wish. From the summit you look 
off not only to boisterous Fundy and the 
islands that you saw from Daddy Good's 
Mountain, but in the opposite direction 
across the quiet, uninterrupted surface 
of Passamacjuoddy Bay to St. Andrew's 
town eight miles away. Northerly, 
some three miles away, another and 
larger peninsular juts out from the main- 
land of New Brunswick to meet the ridge 
of marine hills that forms the chain of 
islands extending across from Deer 
Island. Two of these, Le Tete and 
Doyle's Island (locally called Pendleton's), 
are famous for their precipitous cliffs, 
which rise sheer out of the water to a 
height of five hundred feet. There are 
rough projections here and there on the 
faces of these cliffs, so that adventurous 
visitors have at different times under- 
taken with success to climb them from 
the water side. The splendor of the view 
from their tops may be fancied as worth 
all the hazard of such a climb. It is no 
question of fancy after you have once 
reached the summit. Then vou declare 
with enthusiasm that you would not have 
missed it for anything in the world. 

From the northern end around the 
western and southern shore of Deer 
Island to Chocolate Cove you drive 
through a very wooded region, where 
the signs of human habitation are infre- 
quent and the beauty of the island itself 
is richer through wildness and solitude 
than along the eastern shore. Just as 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAOUODDY 



11 



on the opposite side of the island the road 
winds up and down incessantly, over 
scores of tiny rustic bridges, past bits of 
farmland, where the buildings stand so 
close to the water that the tides reach 
the very garden gate, between high 
banks and along the edges of cliffs some- 
times so narrow that two carriages can 
scarcely pass each other, sometimes for 
aught that your inexperience can fore- 
tell threatening to cast you in another 
moment right off the brim of a precipice 



Northern Harbor, which you reach 
about midway of the length of the island, 
is a charming sheet of water, almost land- 
locked, and therefore usually calm as a 
lake, the largest and most irregular of the 
eight harbors of Deer Island. The 
southern point of Deer Island is a long 
narrow finger of rocky ridge that reaches 
out as far as possible towards Eastport. 
This peninsula is screened from the road 
by high ground and trees, so that one 
might easily pass it by without suspecting 




Dkbr Island's irregular indented shore 



into the waves, only to bring you abruptly 
and safely around the butt of a sharp 
crag onto the long, white, green-walled 
stretch again, with each fresh twist, each 
opening of the trees, disclosing some new 
and often startling vista. And always 
there are hills. And such hills. In one 
of her vivid descriptions Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning has given us the very 
words that best apply to it : 

" An island full of hills and dells, 
All rumpled and uneven, 

With green recesses, sudden swells, 
And odorous valleys driven." 



its presence. The road approaches over 
a tedious incline, whose upper slopes rise 
to the left of the road upwards of three 
hundred feet, the maximum height of the 
island. Beyond, the road swings grace- 
fullv northward towards Chocolate Cove. 

The Garrison house stands at your right 
as you near the cove. No doubt you will 
like to stop and see the curious antique 
dwelling and hear from the inmates some 
of the stories and traditions that are told 
of this famous familv. 

Fanny Lloyd, the mother of William 



12 



THE vSMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAOUODDY 



Lloyd Garrison, was born on Deer Island. 
The Lloyd homestead used to stand on 
the opposite side of Chocolate Cove close 
to the bluff on which you are lodging. 

It is probable that your other days at 
Deer Island will be spent chiefly upon 
the water. 

The islets around Deer Island are not 
the least of its attractions by any means; 
and one might occupy many weeks merely 
in exploring a few of them. The region 
is an artist's paradise. If fishing is your 
hobbv, vou may catch a dozen finny 
varieties from cod to lobster — perhaps 
even a whale. Many of the islands are 
overrun with a growth of wild rock- 
cranberries, and in their season with 
strawberries, raspberries, and blueber- 
ries, so that you may go a-berrying also. 

Perhaps you are fond of shooting. 
Then this locality is one of the best re- 
sorts in New Brunswick, on account of 
the ease and comparative inexpense 
of reaching the various points of the 
game regions. The islands themselves 
abound in sea-fowl. The Chamcook 
Lakes, to which you may go by way of St. 
Andrew's, are famous for their land-locke 
salmon and wild fowl. St. George, St. 
Stephen, and Maguagadavic are also 
reached with very little trouble. Part- 
ridge, woodcock, duck, and rabbits are 
found there; while a short trip by canoe 
will take the sportsman where deer 
abound. 

On the other hand you may go sight- 
seeing to Eastport and Lubec, where 
there are twenty-five sardine factories 
with some one hundred fifty emplovees 
each, and an average weekly pavroll of 
two thousand dollars, almost wholly 
dependent on Deer Island for their supply 
of fish. The cleaning and canning of the 
sardines is an interesting process, and 
considering that in 1905 there was an 
output of nearly two million cases of this 
fish, almost all shipped to the western 
states, one can easily calculate how large 
and important an industry it is. 

Or you may make a shopping and 
souvenir-seeking pilgrimage to St. An- 
drew's, — quaint vSt. Andrew's, where you 
may purchase the "very newest fancy 
from Paris" for a wonderful bargain of a 
price and coming out of the shop door 



find your way impeded by a haughty 
dame goose out with her brood for an 
airing; or a cow peacefully chewing her 
cud on the quay glances up mildly at the 
arriving tourist as he steps around her. 
The people of the West Isles trade less 
at St. Andrew's than at the nearer markets 
at Eastport and Lubec, the United States 
thereby receiving the benefit. If one 
depends on the Viking for conveyance, 
there are two possible trips each week to 
St. Andrew's. Deer Island people, how- 
ever, more frequently go in their own 
trim boats and launches. They use their 
boats in much the same manner as city 
people use carriages. And as for social 
calls or business — no one ever thinks of 
walking if there is a row boat handy, and 
a pull up or down the shore will land one 
any nearer to the destination. 

Some of the yachts and naphtha 
launches seen in these waters are of fairly 
large size, upwards of twenty tons, and 
cost two thousand dollars or more. They 
are often taken out for a cruise of con- 
siderable length, the yachts being pro- 
vided with auxiliary engines to be used 
in case of need. Many of them are very 
swift, too, and not a few have won cups 
in exciting home races. 

For the stranger, on the other hand, 
navigation in the vicinity of Deer Island is 
attended with dangers that make the 
greatest caution necessary. The tide, 
as is well known, rises to a greater height 
in the Bay of Fundy than in almost any 
other part of the world. As this great 
body of water rushes in from the Atlantic 
on the flood among the small islands and 
ledges and points of rock that surround 
Deer Island, raising the level of the coves 
more than twentyfeet in a very brief time, 
the waters are kept in one continual whirl 
of agitation, and in many places the utmost 
care is required to save small boats from 
destruction. The most dangerous point 
among the West Isles is at the southern 
extremity of the finger of land that juts 
out from Deer Island towards Eastport. 
On the flood, and especially at half flood, 
it is exceedingly dangerous for craft of 
any kind to approach the shore, since the 
whirlpools rage furiously like enormous 
boihng caldrons, with a fearful noise 
which is of itself alarming, but proves a 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAM.\0U3DDY 



13 




Indian Island and its one townlet 



friend to boatmen on dark nights by its 
timely warning. For a boat once fairly 
within the merciless yeast of roaring, 
foaming waves is beyond the reach of aid, 
and destruction is as swift as it is certain. 
At the most dangerous time of tide even 
large boats would have but slender 
chance of escape; while at low tide not 
much risk is run by passing through the 
very vortex. The boatmen of Passama- 
quoddy Bay, familiar as they are from 
boyhood with the tides, eddies, ledges, 
and whirlpools, have little difificulty in 
avoiding all danger, and a fatal accident 
seldom occurs among them. They are 
courageous, too. The Deer Island youth 
bred to the use of boats from his earliest 
years displays what might be termed 
recklessness, though it is really only a 
combination of skill and courage. He 
will cross from island to island and go 
from passage to passage through frightful- 
looking whirls of tide, in alarming prox- 
imity to rocks and bars, and in the storm- 
iest of weather. Some, even of the big 
whirlpools, therefore, are not so ravenous 
as they appear, though they are the 



torment of life to unwarv skippers whose 
boats have been compelled to pirouette 
artistically many times for the benefit 
of a delighted audience on shore or other 
boat. 

Among other things you must visit the 
sardine weirs. Of course everybody 
knows that the " sardines " are really 
voung herring, that there are no sardines 
in American-Atlantic waters; but the 
substitute properly canned is toothsome 
and sells readily. The weirs themselves 
may be described as fields covered with 
water instead of with grass, — portions 
of comparatively shallow water enclosed 
bv a stout row of piles interwoven with 
brush. Some of them bear very curious 
names, often derived, it is said, from the 
more striking peculiarities of their owners, 
and vou learn to recognize such terms as 
Bumblebee, Consular, Growler, Butter- 
cup, Golden Press, Dinner Island. A 
patrol is sent out to each weir at certain 
intervals every day, and it is the duty of 
this man to signal the news shoreward 
with his horn if he finds the weir occupied. 
The fish come in with the tides in great 



14 



THE SMILING ISLE OF PASSAMAQUODDY 



shoals, are caught behind the brush walls 
of the weirs, and held until men arrive 
with boats and nets to scoop them out. 
The sardine season is short, lasting only 
four to six months, usually throughout 
the summer. 

With all this business going on on the 
the borderland between two great coun- 
tries, it is necessary that each nation 
should look assiduously to the protection 
of its own interests. The boundary 
between ]\Iaine and New Brunswick is no 
imaginary hne, but a well-surveyed 
bound indicated by buoys that extend 
in a long series from the coast across 
'Ouoddv and between the islands to the 
Atlantic. The Canadian fishery cruiser 
Curlew and an American cutter are in 
charge of these precincts and allow no 
trespassing on their respective domains, 
and in consequence there is a pretty 
lively occasion now and then. In fact, 
there is always a good deal of rivalry 
between things Canadian and things 
American. In everything from boat 
racing to politics you meet that tireless 
spirit of good-natured competition. 



The population is quite equally divided 
between Liberals and Conservatives, 
British subjects, inhabitants of British 
soil, descendants for the most part of 
Loyalist emigrants from Connecticut and 
New York at the time of the Revolution, 
who nevertheless are stanch friends of the 
United States and show their appreciation 
of the advantages this country has to 
offer by sending their children to its 
schools and colleges. 

I\Iany of the people have traveled; 
some of them often spending the winter 
in Florida or some part of the South 
or in California, though to be sure the 
snowy months are not over-rigorous in 
the West Isles, so pure is the air. All are 
fond of merrymaking, so that lodges 
flourish, and social gatherings and moon- 
light excursions are frequent. 

You cannot help liking and admiring 
these whole-souled, unassuming folk as 
much as you like and admire their home. 
And when you have once been so fortu- 
nate as to gain admission to their pleasant 
fellowship you will be of those enthusi- 
astic ones who "come and come again." 




RlCHARDSONVII^LE 



AUG 22 1908 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



017 397 559 4 




The Viking 



-/ 



